A Profile
by IamPsipsina
Summary: What do Mulder and Scully think of one another? Set Series 6 onwards, this is an introspective look at what each sees in their partner - and themselves.
1. Mulder

_My love for the X-Files has been reawakened (for yet another round!) so I am writing again. This is set in Series 6 onwards. In terms of their relationship, read it as you will. More most likely to follow._

**Fox Mulder: A profile**

He had always been a tactile creature, even from the beginning.

Mulder was by nature free with his affection, his emotions and his attention. It was his responsibility, he felt, to put everyone at ease- to create connection.

Further still, he learned early in his adolescence that by diminishing these psychological boundaries he would be free to explore the inner landscapes of the human condition, an introspective objective that once given the proper forum - his basement and its labyrinth of files - would splay out from the psychology of the individual to the untapped mysteries of the universal.

With the exception of most dear Melissa, Scully had never met somebody, even on that first case, so at ease with bridging physical distance.

There was a dark sensuality he exuded. Hazy and at times intoxicating, he emitted it unknowingly (although not always, she felt) and as naturally as a star shares light.

Sex was nothing foreign to him, of that Scully was certain. She [wrongly, tellingly] imagined numerous frissons in sun-lit Upstate cabins during his high school summers and multiple hot and hurried nights at Oxford; women drunk on Proust, red wine and the unadulterated focus of a man who breathed passion and unravelled people like yarn. She was confident his aptitude, care and imagination as a lover would be unrivalled.

In contrast, Scully would smile to think of the monastic life Mulder now lived, small soft-core perversions his only erotic outlet. His mission had relegated all other pursuits nothing short of redundant and although he had taken lovers, she had not known him, in the 6 years they had spent side by side, to pursue a significant other. At least not in the widely understood definition of that term. Perhaps they really were just scared of the possibilities. Of what could be lost. And gained.

He had always been attracted to strong, commanding and alluring women, but his affection was often misplaced. The sparring he was originally attracted to usually heralded oppressive, dishonest or domineering characteristics that made him withdraw or grow jaded. A gentle and caring heart pumped healthily in his chest, wounded, but hopeful for reciprocity from all he met. Scully found it perplexing that somebody as moral could understand the motivations of the most twisted of souls. That he could maintain such emotional distance from the dark, while simultaneously inviting it into him, like ash and smoke...

Mulder ran almost daily, often rising before the sun, to keep his heath peaked and his multi-lineal mind recalibrated. She respected how he trained and valued his body, but also understood his need to exercise his frustrations. This burning of excess energy ensured the tale tell signs of his high-functioning mind were only noticeable to those who knew where to look. The compulsive popping of seeds; the emphatic tailoring of pencils, the occasional bobbing of his thigh as he waited for the opportunity to see, understand, be understood and be seen.

When they began, Scully had on occasion felt as if she wasn't truly there. That when he crossed the boundaries into her personal space, leant towards her with a fierce sense of intensity and even possession, that she was a mere mirror to the whirring of his investigative mind. It seemed he was informing rather than consulting.

She could akin it to playing a sort of infuriating catch up, not due to intellectual inferiority, but because the rapidity and lack of order to his process was a dance she had to learn fast for them to prosper.

She'd catch his focus while she could, hold his high-flying ideas down, like tent pegs, rooting him in science and provide validity and qualification. Scully did everything she could to keep him, them, the X-Files, going. She wanted to arm him with the artillery that would win his private crusade, to prove his theories, even if she couldn't quite let herself agree.

If Mulder wanted to move forward, it had become Scully's responsibility to anchor them in legitimacy as they went. She felt defensive and protective. She wanted to afford Mulder's work- their work- with the kind of respectability denied to him for so long by their short-sighted, feather-capped peers. What others thought was important to neither of them, yet the honour and reputation of the other was held most sacred.

So often would he leave her behind, not just theoretically but literally as well. There, abandoned to explore the recesses of her own psychological palace, Scully would uncover her truth: the scientific key they needed to unlock whatever seemingly impenetrable door they faced.

There she would find him. Waiting. Unable to move forward without her knowledge - and her presence. It was only in the hallowed merging of their opposing skills could they as individuals, and their finely tuned partnership, succeed.

She thinks now she must have fallen for him first. Somewhere in the easy silences of days-long road trips and the hush of hurried corridor conversations. Between the warm touches of his hand against her own and the siren-call of his deep honeyed voice in her ear. Because his own faith, so different from her own, had lit a path she felt destined to follow.

The women of his past, so different from herself, paired with his rousing demeanour made Scully turn her eye from the possibility his affection was deeper than mere emotional availability or loyalty.

He made small flirtatious asides, but she rebuffed them wittily or often, with nothing at all.

He followed her across continents, but he was her partner.

He exposed his raw and unapologetic passion, but he bowed only at the alter of his work.

He loved her. But she did not see. Because Scully never could believe.


	2. Scully

**Dana Scully: A Profile**

Scully exists in a place of duality.

At first glance, she seems to bloom in the garden of all things quantifiable. Her roots are immovable, anchored utterly in reality, form, sense and all things measurable.

Yet simultaneously, she orbits amongst the constellations of her own compassion and patience. She worships at the alter of what is in fact intangible and holy, be it between God and its creation or between a woman and a man.

At the start of their career together, there had been something almost boyish about Scully. It was a stubborn kind of femininity that she hid in boxy suits and stern expression.

That sceptical repartee had drawn men, Mulder amongst them, towards her (she knew, rightly, he enjoyed the chess-like challenges their opposing intellects proffered), yet she found them bristle over time as they became increasingly undermined by her aptitude, attitude and rationale. It was pleasing to her that Mulder smiled off her mild goading. That he felt neither superior or inferior to her.

Of course such personal skepticism had its limits. Her lack of trust in Mulder's instincts, something she in truth envied, paired with own her fear of anything sensual or internal- anything that would make her feel alive, and thus closer to death- was a tension that bit down on their relationship often.

Sometimes the irritation, the putrid humiliation of the professional caricature their work had reduced her to, birthed an anger and resentment that sucked and hissed in her chest like a leach. There were occasions where her displeasure was so transparent she felt capable of throwing it at him like something tangible. Bitterness was an ugly bedfellow and she tossed and turned in the realisation he could and would never consider she wanted more for her life that to blindly follow him. She desired so strongly at times for the chase to end- to stop staring into the darkness and having is scream back at her so violently. But something in him compelled her forwards, acting as a lighthouse and signalling a way through the mire and mayhem. Fortuitously, her sour face and cynical gripes proved a useful masquerade for her deep and hopeless affection.

She challenged him in a way no other could, that she knew.

Yet she wasn't his type.

He doubted she was anyone's type.

Too unique and free-formed to fit into any parable, stereotype or clique, Scully was, to Mulder at least, a whole new caste of human.

She caught his attention first on paper, hiding between the syllables and paragraphs of her remarkable thesis. He had been impressed by her confidence to challenge indomitable Einstein, but could never have imagined the same audacious creature that would put pen to that particular paper could house such a spirit- one capable of giving all and asking for nothing.

Scully was a shifting paradigm that filled all the gaping holes in Mulder's personality and swiftly countered his flaws- she was his 'human credential'.

Even at her most fragile [wracked by grief; eaten at by cancerous teeth], she exuded resilience like a perfume. Her father installed an unshakeable appreciation for strength that she both fostered in herself and required of others. It made her an ideal partner to someone who needed to run blindly into the dark without having to look behind him. Trust. Equality. Partnership. Strength. These attributes were Scully.

When it came to their profession she bore the burden of her gender effectively. Despite having grown in a household founded on sexual equality, Scully's intellect, moxie and morality were often overlooked, many deferring their questions and trust to her male counterpart. Being mistaken as his wife did not irk her because of the romantic connotations, but because she could not believe that was the default assumption. That a female in her position was such an incomprehensible sight, or that two people could be anything other than romantically involved. The realities of their situation aside, it felt prehistoric and unsophisticated to her, when progression and equality stood firmly at the core of everything she believed in.

Gracefully, despite the confusions and oversights, Scully let him lead in public, too self-respecting and secure to battle against misconception and misogyny. But from all around her, she wordlessly demanded equality and respect.

Having fought, learnt and flourished in a unfairly male-dominated industry, it took a while after they met for the tough and tale-tale social tattoos to melt from her demeanour.

Over time she had come to peace with her devastating femininity. It developed before them both, unembellished and free. And as she outgrew the bondage of his processes- discovered her own truths- so too did Scully trigger Mulder's own move from boyishness to masculinity. In that regard, where she led, it he was he that followed.

She wholly owned the ability to surprise and beguile. She often seemed to exist behind a glass wall even Mulder's analytical mind struggled to break through. Yet she was not unavailable, inanimate or cold. Instead, she afforded him the kind of respect and affection he was unused to.

Her only ignorance lay the depth of her own desirability. He was awed by her mild surprise when she drew the affection of other men. Dangerous characters gravitated to her, like all dark things that crave light. They were unseeing of her intricacies and bewitched by her purity.

His heart became softly swollen with guilt to watch her turn towards this often unhinged attention, the ugly scenarios only highlighting their bridled affection, their silent and overwhelming romance and his own inability to invest in anything other than his quest. He gifted her only loneliness, but she never showed him resentment for this chastity, nor for her quiet starvation of emotional and physical fulfilment. Rather, his love was the one thing she didn't ask for proof of.

She is the anchor that roots his vessel in a wild storm; the impenetrable cord that grounds his unruly and often rudder-less kite. Like brilliant light fracturing through a prism, she makes him infinite and visible. She is atomic and eternal. Immortal. Mother Earth, brutally rendered barren by her partner's own determination.

The truth was: Scully had captured Mulder's heart through her very own lack of trying.

In turn, she would transplant her faith from the divine onto him.

She would follow him into the dark and allow herself and her life to be enveloped by his purpose and his love, which over time, had become indistinguishable from her own.

She is strength and equanimity. She is honour and aptitude. She is Honesty. Faith. Loyalty. Wisdom. Peace. She is Home.


End file.
